ASA5510 upgrade and syntax

[AK59]

Dear all,

As I'm experiencing some CPU-hog on a cluster of ASA5510 (Active/Standby scheme), to fix the problem it is recommended to upgrade the IOS. Both firewall are running on ISO 8.4.(4) - have 1024 MB RAM - and use ASDM 6.4

(I know the device and software are old and end-of-support but I would like to upgrade them and, at least, fix my cpu-hog problem)

As both firewall are running on 8.4(4), the ASA upgrade path advise to first upgrade on 9.0(4) and then on 9.1(7.4) (last supported IOS for ASA5510)

My two questions are : 

• Do I need to modify the config syntax ? If yes, for which version ? ( I don't use any NAT rules on these firewalls)
•  I have other Firewall running with ASDM 7.6 & 7.8 - will it be ok to run 6.4 or do I need to upgrade ASDM on his latest available version 7.5(2)  ?

Thanks in advance, 

[balaji.bandi]

Look at the below bot documents :

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/asa/asa91/release/notes/asarn91.html#pgfId-763574

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/asa/upgrade/asa-upgrade/planning.html

upgrading from 8.4 to 9.X is big jump - check there is some syntax changed, some configuration may required to change, so read the 9.X release notes.

Note : May be since ASA 5510 is EOL,. check are you  able to download the software or contact local partner to help you get images.

follow below thread :

https://community.cisco.com/t5/network-security/asa-5510-upgrade-8-4-7-to-9-1-3/td-p/3712257

[Rob Ingram]

@AK59 

The ASA config syntax changes were introduced in 8.3+, so not relevant if using 8.4.

I would upgrade the ASDM version, to the version compatible with the ASA version you will be running. If you continued to use 6.4, features available in ASA 9.x would not be configurable using the older ASDM version.

HTH